Phenomenal use of alliteration. I’m no English major, but damn, I appreciate this lyric. With every clock tick the person shudders, reminded of a time where every second could have been their last.

We’ve all lay in bed late at night, our eyes glued open at the ceiling. Each second feeling longer than eternity itself.

In my endless dance with entropy
I must rescind my sentience

We all have coping mechanisms. Defense responses to our internal struggles. Some drink, others watch too much TV, others eat. They all serve the same deeper end goal. To silence the voices that are telling us things we don’t want to hear, or remind us of things we do not want to see.

In the endless dance with the internal chaos, we cede our control.

Machines of air looking down on us
The beasts of dust as we grapple heel and hand,
Mud and sand, (blood red oil)
The chaff of the harvest
Converted to currencies of wealthy meansStepping stones cut from our perforated bones
Riches are reaped beside our bodies sown just to be thrown back again
And forgotten if we stumble inLaid inside a homeless nest,
Stuck with eager dirty needles,
Shipped to an early steeple where boxes close
Descend with grace as you defend yourself
Both charitable and chastePraise me for my valor, lay me on a crimson tower
Justify my endless terror as my finest hour
Treat me as a token to deceive the child
Whom we fatten for this scapegoat slaughter

emphasis mine

Wow, just wow. This bit is quite political (which I don’t like to get into), but it made me so unbelievably sad. It gets the listener to question who is profiting from war, why we idolize the system that encourages young people to go and die for valor, to come back home and be mistreated and forgotten.

The homeless nest refers to the many veterans who turn to drugs to deal with PTSD, and then get shamed by their communities for trying to deal with their demons in the only way that they could find.

I learned to fight I learned to kill
I learned to steal I learned that none of this is real
None of this is real
None of this is realNone of this is realBut there’s a war inside my head

Another extremely heavy lyric. What is real? Does war end when you return to your family and friends? How do veterans use the skills they’ve learned? What about the millions of people who never fully come home?

Pat is flat.
And that’s that.
All of Pats friends are fat.
Pat was born to a couple of famished expats.
The fat pack won’t let Pat into their frat.
He tried to show them that he could scat; but on his face they spat.
Pat grows up resentful and becomes an autocrat.
Drat.
He implements new laws stat. Now everyone has to be flat.
And that’s that.